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About the nativity of Great Princes
One day in the Mirsky Castle Complex a guide was telling Lithuanian tourists about the castle, and they were really surprised why he referred to “their” princes as to his?
From my point of view, history can not be considered as a straight line. To speak about “our” or “your” princes, it is necessary to prove economic, political, cultural and historic succession between the XIII century in the history of Eastern Europe and contemporary Belarus or Lithuania or Poland. It is impossible to be done. The history of this part of Europe always was discontinuous. At certain stages of history people forgot about what had happened before. Let’s take language as an example. The Old Slavonic or Old Belarusian language was the state language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This language is a prototype of a contemporary Belarusian language. Later the Old Slavonic language was replaced by Polish, then by Russian language. And when the Russian Empire collapsed, Lithuanian and Belarusian historians looked back and said that their past is the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, although 100-150 years before this question wasn’t raised.
© National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, 2011
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